Thursday, May 15, 2008

Free water plan to go ahead - The Star

SHAH ALAM: May 15, 2008 By DHARMENDER SINGH

It's free water for households in Selangor from June 1, Selangor Mentri Besar Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim confirmed.

Syarikat Bekalan Air Sdn Bhd (Syabas) executive chairman Tan Sri Rozali Ismail had said on Tuesday that the legal and implementation aspects of the plan had yet to be finalised.

Khalid said he saw no problem implementing the state government’s plan to offer the first 20 cu m of water free to households.

“We will hold discussions on the fund allocations with Syabas and we will adjust the revenue loss when we do the restructuring of stakes (held by the state government) in the water industry in Selangor,” Khalid told a press conference yesterday.

Khalid said the snag was the use of bulk meters at some of the high-rise residential units that would affect up to 300,000 consumers.

He said the free water would only be provided to residential units using individual meters because water supplied through bulk meters was also used for eateries, swimming pools and other purposes. Owners of high-rise units could switch to individual meters.

“There will be teething problems but over the next two or three months, people will become more aware of the advantages of individual meters and they will do the switch,” he said.

Khalid also denied that the free water offer was a way for Pakatan Rakyat to “bribe” the people after having won the state as claimed by some Barisan MPs at Parliament recently.

“The move is aimed at relieving the people’s burden in the current economic climate and as long as there are profits (from Syabas), we will channel them back to the people” he said.

1 comment:

Billgates said...

Syabas Tan Sri. It's BN which cannot fulfill this. What about the promise BN made for Kelantan?